Industrial furnaces

An oven is a tool used to raise the temperature of a product. It can be either :

• equipment intended solely for heating (e.g. reheating steel before plastic deformation, reheating crude oil before distillation);

• a real reactor in which products are processed (e.g. glass melting furnace, petrochemical steam cracking furnace).

It is generally integrated into a complex production line, of which it is one of the components.

Furnaces are found in a wide range of industrial activities, making a global approach rather tricky.

This article deals with furnaces in general, and attempts to identify characteristics common to all furnaces. It introduces a series of articles, each dealing with furnaces specific to a particular industry:

• steel industry furnaces ;

• metal heat treatment furnaces ;

• refining and chemical industry furnaces;

• cement kilns ;

• glass industry furnaces ;

• kilns for the ceramics and refractory industries.

These texts cover the specific aspects of each type of furnace.